Gear & Gadgets —

Where we go from the top: Hands-on with Samsung’s Galaxy S 4

The new phone is packed with features. Not all of them work, or matter.

The Galaxy S 4 is in many ways comparable to the outgoing Galaxy S III. They both share the same light, all-plastic construction and general button layout. The S 4 adds a larger, 1080p display, however, as well as new software features and faster internals.

Samsung’s next big thing, the Galaxy S 4, finally entered the spotlight Thursday evening after weeks of rumor and speculation. While the hardware is impressive, it seems Samsung barely broke a sweat over delivering on that front; instead, the company focused heavily on adding software to stock Android 4.2 Jelly Bean in the form of TouchWiz features, some new and some ported from Samsung’s Galaxy Note devices. Some features are sensible additions that seem like they add decent functionality without a lot of effort; others are almost the exact opposite.

When we finally got to hold the thing, it felt nice and solid in our hands and the shape is a little more appealing than the Galaxy S III. We brought an S III along for comparison, and noted that while the S 4 has a larger screen by a fraction of an inch, the body is actually narrower due to a slimmer bezel. The only downside of the hand-feel is that the phone is too light and has little gravity to it; we wouldn’t mind it being weightier if only to make it feel more sturdy.

The screen on the phone looks beautiful and didn’t have any "off" tints to it. The 13-megapixel camera, likewise, looks like it can produce great shots. For kicks, we tested out the new dual-camera mode that shoots out the back and front of the phone. Dragging and resizing the second-camera screen seemed to work without a hitch. While we can’t say we often find ourselves wishing for this feature, it seems nifty both for videos and photos—both cameras are there, so why not?

The crowded environment didn’t seem prime for heavy testing of S Voice, let alone its new language translation features. We gave it a couple of quick commands, and it seems to have improved from the last time we interacted with it. Even though there were plenty of people talking around us and the noise level was high, the phone seemed to hear every word perfectly.

Samsung added some new functionality to the touchscreen as well, including the ability to use it by not physically making contact and instead hovering your fingers or hands over it, and the ability to use it with gloves. Gloves-on, we found the phone worked without a hitch, and even typing on the keyboard was easy.

We had a bit of trouble with the contactless interactions, though. In order for gestures to activate anything, they needed to be just above the surface of the phone, about the distance your younger sibling might hold a finger from your arm when they are “not touching you.” Both swipes and taps required this near-touch not-touch. Activating a tap also didn’t seem to respond to a near-touch tapping motion as well as a stationary hover over the icon we wanted to select.

We may have also had a couple misfires on selections by hovering too close when we didn’t mean to, but we’d have to do more extensive testing to know whether this is really a problem. Even if it is, users are able to turn the “AirGesture” feature on and off in the settings.

Enlarge/ Many of Samsung's new features have on/off switches in the settings, making them easy to avoid if they turn out to be too aggravating. Samsung also warned that some features may not be available in some markets, so we may be worrying for nothing.

Andrew Cunningham

We tried to take a quick browse through the new Samsung Hub, which appears to be a challenge to Google Play’s content store. Some sections, like movies, oddly wouldn’t let us browse without being able to read and use our location, but the music section loaded without issue; it appeared like a generic, if pretty, digital music store.

Enlarge/ Music stores—everyone's got one, but most of us are just streaming now, so why bother?

Andrew Cunningham

The phone has still more features we have yet to test out, including S Voice translation, the Knox security settings, eye tracking to pause and play video, and some content manipulation features like Story Album for photos and Group Play to feed music through up to eight Galaxy S 4s at once. We're not sure all of Samsung's additions will be home runs, but the core functionality and design are better than ever. Samsung has stated that the phone won’t be out until the second quarter of this year, but at least it’s no longer the sole possession of one Jeremy Maxwell.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

It looks like it can be a contender for best Android phone, but there are a lot of other options launching (or that have recently launched) with similar specs.

The 'air gesture' thing could be useful for operating the phone with gloves, but I don't see the utility in hovering a fraction over the screen instead of just touching the screen for general purpose use - is the point just so that you don't leave fingerprints on the screen? It seems like you'd still have to touch it for certain things anyway, so why do it at all?

The 8-core processor is a neat innovation, if it actually ends up returning noticeably improved battery life in the real world. How much of a smartphone's power draw is from the CPUs as opposed to the cellular radios and screen? Given that the phone feels too light it might have made sense just to make a little bit thicker and beefier and use that extra space for a larger battery.

The Best news announced about this today is that the phone will be available for Verizon... I'd rather have the Nexus 4 or the HTC One, but... well... Verizon doesn't have a version of those phones -.-

I look forward to the full review. I hope this motivates Apple to step up their hardware capabilities, because I'm leaning towards iPhone 6 if they do. If they don't, idk what I'll do...

For devices like these the hardware needed depends a lot on the OS. Android seems to be much more resource-hungry than iOS or WP8, so it needs more juice to feel as fast as the other platforms on slower hardware.

I would love to see Apple release a larger phone with a higher resolution display and a larger battery. Apple's obsession with keeping the device super-slim and small is what drove me away from the iPhone 5.

EDIT: Apple seems smart enough to realize that not everyone wants the same size of iMac, or the same size of iPad. The huge popularity of larger phones should clue them in that there would be plenty of demand for a 4.5" - 5" iPhone.

Seems these days like the rate of improvement is diminishing between each generation. I think that the industry as a whole seems to be maturing and that we'll start to see fewer improvements with each new generation, with all brands. A faster processor, a new screen, and a handful of minor improvements or minor new features here and there.

I don't know, 4 core -> 8 core imo is not an innovation, even if they decided to go with little cores for power saving.

I think mobile phones at the moment have had plenty of "innovation" (read: pushing the envelope on specs) what really needs to happen is consolidation, because software, and OS's are just all over the place.

Isn't really a four-core processor at any given time when it's running, with two sets of four cores? From my very limited reading on this chip it uses the low power four cores when needed, then switches to the high performance four cores? If so it's a four core chipset, with a backup of another four cores.

Just guessing, though I can't imagine it would make sense to have all eight running at the same time on a phone. Anyone know for sure?

I'm interested to see how the GS4 compares to the BB Z10. While the GS4 is bigger (5" vs 4.2") with a correspondingly bigger battery, the extra cores and larger screen will certainly use up a lot of that larger battery. And if media/gaming is a primary use, the battery will not last long. Just as well it's removable. I think only the iPhone has a non-removable battery now. Don't know how accurate (or annoying) that 'almost touch' would be but the gloves-on aspect is a good one. Comparing the two, the gestures on the Z10 seem smoother and more intuitive and you do touch the screen like all other touchscreen phones. Only experience will tell if the 'almost touch' is a good or bad feature. Just a note, though (no pun intended) It would have been better for Samsung to use something other than "Hub" in their name as the BB Z10 uses that for its unified messaging centre.

So based on the test usage, the big question is if this is worthy of replacing your current phone. I feel as though (p)reviewers seldom make that note when reviewing products. Though this is probably a bit premature to ask.

Isn't really a four-core processor at any given time when it's running, with two sets of four cores? From my very limited reading on this chip it uses the low power four cores when needed, then switches to the high performance four cores? If so it's a four core chipset, with a backup of another four cores.

Just guessing, though I can't imagine it would make sense to have all eight running at the same time on a phone. Anyone know for sure?

That's a good question. Apparently the big.LITTLE spec allows for either configuration, though from what I understand even the 'either/or' setup is a little bit more granular with each individual core pair being able to switch between the A15 and A7, so you could potentially have 2 of the A15 cores running and 2 of the A7, or 1 A15 and 3 A7, etc (though who knows if that would be more or less power efficient than just running 2 A15s...) I imagine the power management firmware running the show will play a big part in the real world results.

I''m not sure what phone activities would need all the juice from both the big and little cores combined though (or even if the way it was implemented in the GS4 could do that). Launching apps generally seems to be the slowest thing I notice on any modern smartphone, but how much of that is just because of the speed of the flash memory? HTML5 web apps could conceivably take advantage of more power for more demanding applications, but I don't know how many CPU intensive things most people will be doing on their phones.

I like! But sticking with my Note 2.Would be more appealing if it was a few millimeters thicker if it gave me more battery life... but will wait for the reviews to pass proper judgement.

If they'd just thrown a 1080p screen on the Note 2 it would have been so much more appealing. Now, though this is smaller, it has a higher resolution screen. I have to imagine the Note 3 will hit the 1080p mark, as that is rapidly becoming the new standard for flagship Android phones, and likely also come with the 8 (or more accurately put 4+4) core processor, but then what besides the extra screen size will separate it from the GS4?

For devices like these the hardware needed depends a lot on the OS. Android seems to be much more resource-hungry than iOS or WP8, so it needs more juice to feel as fast as the other platforms on slower hardware.

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And incomes the FUD spreaders. Its not the OS that is the problem. Its these god damn overlays. Android vanilla is a fast lightweight OS that can go head to head with anything Apple puts out....until the OEM's start dicking with it and adding Touchpiss, Senseless, etc. I would get a Nexus in a heartbeat if they didn't skip putting in an SD card slot. Apparently Google thinks people don't need more then 64GB of storage space.

For devices like these the hardware needed depends a lot on the OS. Android seems to be much more resource-hungry than iOS or WP8, so it needs more juice to feel as fast as the other platforms on slower hardware.

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And incomes the FUD spreaders. Its not the OS that is the problem. Its these god damn overlays. Android vanilla is a fast lightweight OS that can go head to head with anything Apple puts out....until the OEM's start dicking with it and adding Touchpiss, Senseless, etc. I would get a Nexus in a heartbeat if they didn't skip putting in an SD card slot. Apparently Google thinks people don't need more then 64GB of storage space.

And that's the rub. Until I can go into the AT&T store and buy any Android phone I want, take it home and reinstall a fresh version of stock Android on the phone without all of the manufacturer skins and garbage on it, the speed of stock Android is largely irrelavent.

If you want stock Android right now your only option is to pay full non-contract price for a phone with a lower resolution screen than the newest line of flagship phones and live without LTE data speeds.

The pixel density arms race has gotten out of hand. Seriously, what is a 441ppi screen supposed to accomplish? Apple likely started this with the iPhone 4 (at 326ppi) and for the most part they are right in saying that its resolution was ideal, but now the battle has gone overboard. Pumping out 1920x1080 via HDMI for an HDTV? Absolutely essential. Doing it on a mere 5" screen? Pointless overkill. It just means the GPU has to work that much harder and needlessly burn battery life to accomplish something that 99% of users will never notice or appreciate.

The pixel density arms race has gotten out of hand. Seriously, what is a 441ppi screen supposed to accomplish? Apple likely started this with the iPhone 4 (at 326ppi) and for the most part they are right in saying that its resolution was ideal. But now the battle has gotten out of hand. Pumping out 1920x1080 via HDMI for an HDTV? Absolutely essential. Doing it on a mere 5" screen? Pointless overkill. It just means the GPU has to work that much harder and needlessly burn battery life to accomplish something that 99% of users will never notice or appreciate.

When the salesman at Best Buy says "this one is better because it has 1080p", then they will appreciate it.That's what it's there for.

The pixel density arms race has gotten out of hand. Seriously, what is a 441ppi screen supposed to accomplish? Apple likely started this with the iPhone 4 (at 326ppi) and for the most part they are right in saying that its resolution was ideal. But now the battle has gotten out of hand. Pumping out 1920x1080 via HDMI for an HDTV? Absolutely essential. Doing it on a mere 5" screen? Pointless overkill. It just means the GPU has to work that much harder and needlessly burn battery life to accomplish something that 99% of users will never notice or appreciate.

I think really the only tangible benefit could be for scripts with complex characters, such as Chinese and Japanese kanji. I'm not even sure if Korean hangul would benefit much as their characters don't have a lot of the complexity that the other two i mentioned can have.

I do recall seeing a video somewhere with a demo display from a Japanese company that had a crazy high PPI and compared to various other densities, and I recall there not really being any difference between the ~300 ones like the iPhone has and those in a 400ppi range. However their display which was ~600 did make a nice jump. So I'd rather screens stay at "retina" levels until hardware is able to drive something double that at a reasonable speed, sooner than that and you're just sacrificing performance for basically imperceptible benefit.

Isn't really a four-core processor at any given time when it's running, with two sets of four cores? From my very limited reading on this chip it uses the low power four cores when needed, then switches to the high performance four cores? If so it's a four core chipset, with a backup of another four cores.

Just guessing, though I can't imagine it would make sense to have all eight running at the same time on a phone. Anyone know for sure?

That's a good question. Apparently the big.LITTLE spec allows for either configuration, though from what I understand even the 'either/or' setup is a little bit more granular with each individual core pair being able to switch between the A15 and A7, so you could potentially have 2 of the A15 cores running and 2 of the A7, or 1 A15 and 3 A7, etc (though who knows if that would be more or less power efficient than just running 2 A15s...) I imagine the power management firmware running the show will play a big part in the real world results.

I''m not sure what phone activities would need all the juice from both the big and little cores combined though (or even if the way it was implemented in the GS4 could do that). Launching apps generally seems to be the slowest thing I notice on any modern smartphone, but how much of that is just because of the speed of the flash memory? HTML5 web apps could conceivably take advantage of more power for more demanding applications, but I don't know how many CPU intensive things most people will be doing on their phones.

Everything that I have read points to them using the Task Migration model, but I haven't seen a direct quote from anyone over at Samsung. As I understand it, only 1 cluster is used at any given time in this scenario: everything is executed on the A7 cluster until it's maximum DFVS operating point is reached, at which point migration is invoked and the state is saved and moved over to the A15 cluster.

Given that the US version of the phone will be using a Snapdragon CPU rather than the Octa, I can't imagine Samsung trying to implement the MP model. At least with task migration, an Octa powered handset running off the A15 cluster should behave the similarly to the snapdragon solution.

Arguably, implementing big.LITTLE in either mode on just half (or whatever the percentages break down to after these things actually go on sale) of the S4 handsets could create some development issues.ARM provides a software switcher to implement state save-restore and whatnot but says this in their whitepaper on the architecture: "...it may be that the small number of programmer’s model differences between Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 may want to be handled by the OS rather than the switcher." I'm curious about modifications. if any, that were made to Android to accommodate this and, of course, how effective it ends up being in extending battery life.

Edit: Fixed a factual error. I referred to the snapdragon 600 as utilizing the A15 architecture. As TheGame points out later in the thread, Krait is custom solution and, while ARM compatible, is definitely != A15.